Goodbye CIGNA. We Won't Miss You.

December 31, 2006 will see the end of CIGNA as a player in the discount dental plan business.

Whether you call it the "CIGNA Dental Network Access" plan, "CIGNAPlus Savings" or the "Preferred Network Access", these plans were some of the most popular reduced fee for service dental programs available to the dentally uninsured. Not only was it affordable but it also had well over 60,000 participating dental providers across the USA making its network of participating dentists easily the largest of any discount dental program. For a few years there, CIGNA was the undisputed leader in discount dental plans.

So what happened to the plan which had everything going for it? I'll tell you what happened and I'll describe it with one word; unreliable! You simply could not count on the dentists that CIGNA provides its members to accept this plan as each dentist could arbitrarily decide which patients they took which ones they didn't. Imagine paying a full year membership of front to a role in the CIGNA plans only to go to a dentist on the list and be told by a 19-year-old receptionist with illusions of Godhood "Sorry, but we no longer take that plan".

It was experiences like this that kept piling up and piling up until running a discount program became one big headache for CIGNA. And who needs a headache? No one does which is why CIGNA got out of the discount dental plan game.

It's just too bad that instead of improving its discount dental plan by making all its dental providers sign a contract requiring them to honor their contractual commitments, CIGNA took the easy way out.

Goodbye CIGNA. We Won't Miss You.